Sup ARMY! Since today is #SaferInternetDay (I only just found out, oops), let’s talk about something we’ve been seeing a lot of lately in our timelines.

Crypto currency giveaways and what they actually mean.

Let’s get it!

So I’m sure we’ve all seen our timelines fill up with comments and retweets about joining a giveaway for KTH1 and JJK1, right?

Make it the most liked comment, ARMY, we’re a powerful fan base let’s get some money to support the upcoming mixtapes.

And those comments are under tweets that say “all the people liking your comment need to follow me and (insert 2 or 3 other accounts here) to count!”

There’s a reason they’re demanding so much interaction. And it’s not a good one.

Crypto currency (normally written without the space, but I’m trying to avoid getting picked up by keyword-searching bots), if you aren’t aware, was originally designed as a virtual currency that wasn’t controlled by banks or governments. The word for this is “decentralised”.

Transactions using it can be trusted because of the technology behind it: blockchain. Every person who even has 0.01 of the currency has a copy of the records of every transaction made, from being mined to being transferred.

This is very basic explanation because I don’t really want to get into crypto currency too much - I love the original idea behind Bitc (fill in the rest - bots will def get that one) but the current climate of it being treated as stocks and “get rich quick” idea irritates me.

This is where these giveaways come in - and why they’re so suspicious, and why I’ll never interact into the comments and tweets, no matter how much I might want to support the mixtapes too.

There is a market within cybercrime circles for established social media accounts - people will, and do, buy accounts that have high engagement (likes, retweets, comments, follows, and visits to the profile all count to this!) so they can use the account for their own deeds.

This can be anything from someone posting normally but wanting high engagement for influencer-like status, to advertising websites for scam sales (to steal money, or sell products that are unsafe), or to phish information for later use, or even to spread malware.

Now, of course, not every person running these giveaways is going to be trying to build an account’s engagement with the intent to sell it on to potential bad actors.

But if an account seems to be constantly doing these giveaways, it’s probable that that’s the case.

Never forget that we aren’t the only people who know our fandom’s abilities when it comes to engagement! We see people do it all the time in journalism and on platforms like YouTube.

How we interact can have a big impact - let’s do our best to make sure that impact is good

Here’s an additional thread explaining more about crypto currency, as well as other reasons why these giveaways and promotion accounts are suspicious https://twitter.com/starkindler1/status/1359081538948911106

I’ve been told that the above quoted thread is no longer available. This is another thread I’ve seen around that offers another perspective on why this issue isn’t great - it’s a different one from the one I originally quoted though. https://twitter.com/twentyfivefor7/status/1359597733078683650

As an additional clarification to this thread, as a few people have asked: as far as I am personally aware, it isn't possible to steal account information just through interacting with a tweet or following an account.

I know there has been concern with data mining around this issue as well, and I think that stems from the links that some of the giveaways had been requesting entrants to click - there's a possibility of phishing or malware from these sites.

I don't know that for certain, and I don't want to accuse anyone of wilfully engaging in phishing or malware campaigns without more information. I didn't see any of the GAs that had links associated, so didn't get to poke at said links.